Treatise on Asthma

(2) I know from what I have witnessed with my own eyes and from what my Master has described to me that the cause of this asthma [from which he suffers] is a defluxion¹ that descends from the brain at certain times [of the year], but mostly in winter. [ . . . ] I also know that you are middle-aged and that your body is intermediate between leanness and heaviness and that your general temperament is very close to the balanced type, though it tends somewhat toward heat, and that the temperament of your brain is hotter than it should be. I inferred this from the fact that you are harmed—as you told me—by the odors of hot ingredients, that you cannot stand their smell, that your hair feels very heavy for you, that you find relief [only] by shaving it very frequently, and that you are [made] very uncomfortable by covering your head with a large turban. All these [symptoms] indicate [excessive] heat of [your] brain.

(3) You told me—may God heal you—that the air of Alexandria is very harmful for you and that you go to Cairo whenever you expect the onset of an attack [of asthma] because the air of Cairo is lighter and calmer so that it is easier for you to bear that attack. [ . . . ]

I have found that the best thing to do is to have the stomach occupied with light tasty foods which are easy to digest. Sometimes I drink soup [made] from young roosters, when it is available, and then go to sleep; and sometimes I boil five or six eggs and eat their yolks with some cinnamon and salt sprinkled on them. Sometimes I eat some pistachio nuts and raisins without their seeds, or raisins and almonds with fānīd, and drink a beverage of sugar or honey—whichever is available. During the winter I take a glass of wine when it is cold. [ . . . ]

(15) I experimented upon myself and took one ounce of white sugar pulverized with half a dirham of anise in the wintertime; in the summertime I drank it with a little lemon juice every third or fourth day, according to what was appropriate. I found that it purifies the stomach from the phlegm and cleanses it well. [ . . . ]

(3) Galen said the following, and these are his very words: “You should know that nothing compares to sleep immediately after a bath for cocting [i.e., digesting—Ed.] what can be cocted and dissolving the bad humors themselves.”

(4) Says the author: Since I have come to know about this, I have not bathed except at the time of sunset, and I go directly from the bathhouse to the deep and beneficial sleep of the night. I was very happy with its effect [on me]. [ . . . ]

(5) I once personally compounded an electuary for a woman about whose case I was very concerned. [ . . . ]

This is how I compounded it: I took Venushair, macerated it in hot water, and cooked it at random, without regarding its weight. I strained it and put into the strained substance a similar amount of Venushair, without weighing it. I cooked this and strained it once again, until the juice acquired some sort of color. I prepared this separately. I did the same with licorice root: I crushed it, macerated it, and cooked it alone. Then I strained it, returned it to a low fire until it assumed the consistency of honey, and set it aside. Then I took two glasses from the Venushair decoction, one glass from the licorice root decoction (because of its thicker consistency), one glass of fresh fennel juice, and two glasses of thickened grape juice with the consistency of honey. I mixed everything, put it on a low fire, cooked it, skimmed the foam from the top of it, and took it [from the fire]. This is a good linctus with the consistency of honey and a delicious taste. [ . . . ]

(33) In the Maghreb I [once] saw a young man, who was very strong but clearly suffering from overfilling, who became afflicted with continuous choleric fever. The physician bled him on the second day of his disease, and when he had drained around fifty dirhams of blood [the patient’s] strength declined. The physician became frightened and closed the place of the bleeding and ordered the patient to drink rose syrup and oxymel and to rest until the next day so that he could give him the appropriate treatment. However, the patient died that very night. This incident became notorious among the physicians and the people. [ . . . ]

There is a well-known story which once circulated in the Maghreb about what happened to the successor of ‘Ali, commander of the Muslims (may God have mercy on him).² He had been ill for some time—I have not heard what he suffered from—and he was older than twenty years of age and, as they said, of a very strong bodily constitution. It was wintertime, and the city where he lay ill was the seat of the king of the Maghreb—namely, the city of Marrakesh. When he recovered from his illness, [he did not gain his full strength,] but became a convalescent with a corresponding lifestyle. His physicians prescribed for him a regimen normal for a convalescent.

These physicians, who were four [in number] and who were very learned in this [medical] art, were Abū al-‘Alā’ ibn Zuhr;³ Sufyān;⁴ Abū al-Ḥasan ibn Qamiel of Saragossa, the Israelite; and Abū Ayyūb ibn al-Mu‘allim of Seville, the Israelite. When they saw that his body was clean but that he was not fully recovered and that his digestion and innate heat were weak, they decided, since he drank no wine, to give him half a dirham of the great theriac to drink [ . . . ]. About three hours later, just before the morning prayer, a loud cry was heard in his apartment. The physicians were roused to come to him [immediately], but he died—may God have mercy upon him—before or shortly after their arrival, as the story goes.